FedEx Kinkos Is Confused By Your Request To Overnight A Letter

By consumeristcareyApril 19, 2008

The workers at the FedEx Kinkos in Astor Place didn’t know how to react when reader Eric asked to overnight a letter. They were apparently trained to handle only the Kinkos side of the store, and weren’t sure how to ship Eric’s parcel—a school board election ballot—to Hackensack, New Jersey. Their solution was both innovative and idiotic: they told Eric to write his credit card info on a slip of paper, and promised to take care of everything the next morning.

Eric writes:

When you walk into a store that says FEDEX on it, one would think that the employees there would know how to ship things via FedEx. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case on Sunday night at the FedEx Kinko’s on Astor Place in Manhattan.

My town is having a school board election on Tuesday. I’m in college now, so I requested an absentee ballot. The county clerk’s office mistyped my address, so I only ended up getting the ballot on Sunday. I brought it to Kinko’s to make sure it arrived back at the clerk’s office in time.

Unfortunately, when I got there, no one at the store knew how to handle FedEx because their “shipping station was closed”. Of course, the hours listed on their website don’t say anything about separate hours. The employee’s solution was to fill out an order form and then call the store back tomorrow to get the tracking information. Because of the time-sensitivity of it, though, I needed to know if I could sent it ground or if it had to be sent overnight. No one could give me an answer, other than that I should call 800-go-fedex. I asked 3 people in the store (Malik, Stephanie, and the manager Carlo or Carlos) if they had some kind of internal number they could call for me, but they claimed they didn’t. So, while standing in a FedEx store, I called FedEx. The guy on the other end didn’t seem to understand the concept of days (First he said ground would take one day and arrive on Wednesday, which doesn’t make sense. Then he said that it would arrive on Tuesday but it could arrive on Wednesday). Eventually it was all sorted out and I decided to send it ground.

Then came the next issue. Since they couldn’t tell me how much the cost would be, I had to write my credit card number on the order form, which presumably gets attached to the package and sent all over the place. Seems like a really good opportunity for identity thieves. And because I was just handing it to a person who wasn’t actually entering it into the system, I couldn’t get a receipt and there was no tracking number. The only thing I could get confirming that I had given them the package was one of the carbon-copies of the order form, which anyone could just pick up and create. When one of the nice things about FedEx is being able to track the package at every step, this didn’t fill me with a lot of confidence.

This morning, I called the store to get the tracking information. I was on the phone for 22 minutes, constantly being put on hold and then being asked who I was holding for. I was worrying the whole time that they lost my package. This kept going until someone took pity on me and said she would call me back. When she did, as luck would have it, there was a tracking number and the price appears correct. Hopefully FedEx is able to deliver it better than they were able to receive it!

I called the district manager last night to complain; I left a voicemail but he hasn’t called back.

We want to commend Eric for his civic awareness and commitment to local democracy. School board elections are dominated by seniors, angry parents, and property owners, so it’s all the more impressive that he was willing to get involved while in college.

That said, have some faith in the government! Hackensack is 20 miles from New York. The post office would’ve been up to the challenge.

Just so you know; the CC number only goes on the front page of the shipping bill, and they remove that page when they stick it on the package.

I’m not completely sure why Kinko’s is the only one being put to shame here. 2 minutes of looking around and you would have found the FedEx shipping forms with the supplies. Then simply fill in your info and hand it to them. You could have even gone to fedex.com and shipped it from there, or called FedEx and have them arrange the shipment. If you can get online to complain, you should be able to find FedEx.com.

He’s making it sound like shipping with FedEx is rocket science. I fully expect the Kinko’s staff to be clueless, but surely someone in College could be more resourceful and figure it out for himself?

Why on earth didn’t he just fill out a form and drop it in the box and be done with it? Was the purpose of the store visit and phone call to see about the possibility of sending it 2-day instead? If the document was so important, I don’t think the $ saved would be worth the risk… Glad it worked out in the end and I hope they got his ballot in time.

Jesus christ, creating a Fedex account is free. He could have just printed his own airbill and dropped the ballot in any Fedex box. He even would have known exactly when the it would be delivered for the different shipping options.

I guess even though he’s able to complain on an internet blog; operating a web browser is beyond the abilities of this college student.

They didn’t tell him to write his credit card number “on a slip of paper”, they told him to write it on the airbill under “payment method”. There’s a space for it and everything. And I really don’t understand the whole calling-the-store thing… why didn’t he take the customer copy of the airbill he filled out, which has the tracking number on it?

It’s definitely the case, though, that the people working at Fedex-Kinkos aren’t the brightest. Here’s the thing: when Fedex bought Kinko’s, they turned the regular Kinko’s locations into “Fedex-Kinko’s” and added the Fedex shipping stations. But technically, the Fedex shipping part of the store is separate from the Kinko’s part of the store and often keeps different hours (which is why even though the rest of the store was open when he went in, the shipping station was closed). The regular Kinko’s employees probably don’t know much more about shipping than any other copy center employee, despite the “Fedex” name on store. It can be very frustrating, that’s for sure.

I’m with Eric on this story. I don’t use Fedex enough to know the ins and outs of setting up a shipment on my own. To avoid the wrong delivery time, you have to check the right boxes on the complicated Fedex shipping label, which means you have to know Fedex terminology and procedures, which I have no intention of memorizing. I would have done just what Eric did–go into a store that says “Fedex Kinkos,” thinking I would get my questions answered and my package shipped.

If I need to send something overnight, I generally stick with USPS services, which to me are the most flexible and user-friendly. And Consumerist is right about First Class Mail–I regularly get overnight delivery with just a 41 cent stamp.

I think people are really missing the point here. Not everyone has experience shipping with FedEx, and it is completely reasonable to expect the staff of a “FedEx Kinko’s” to know what they hell they’re doing with FedEx, but in my many experiences, they never do. The merger is a joke, as the Kinko’s staff are nearly always completely clueless and incapable when it comes to FedEx.

Additionally, I’ve found that not only are FedEx airbills rather confusing if you don’t already know what you’re doing, but their web site is terrible. It is infinitely easier to print shipping labels from the UPS and USPS web sites. I avoid FedEx altogether because of this.

I can remember that when I started using FedEx it was not clear at all how to proceed. For my first few shipments, I went to an actual FexEd location to get everything in order. So I learned how to fill the airbills and then I learned how to use their web site. So now I pretty much never have to go to a staffed location. But the fact of the matter is that for people who have never used FedEx or who use it only very infrequently, it is not obvious how to proceed.

And if FedEx and Kinko’s really merged I’d expect all of the sales staff to have a clue about shipping with FedEx.

Kinkos employees have always been great to me, and they know their business (copying, imaging and publishing). I’m not surprised this employee tried to be helpful. It sounds like this is a Fedex organizational problem, and a rather obvious one.

Note to Fedex: Cross-train your store employees, and if your store is open, that means a customer is going to walk into the store expecting to get the service that’s advertised on the sign out front.

Maybe I’m missing something, but you’re shipping a piece of paper 20 miles? I’m not from New York, and maybe its different, but even on a bike, thats only an hour or so, and if you have a car, its an hour roundtrip at the most.

That being said, read the airbill, fill it out… its not that difficult. Either the guys in the store or the customer should have been able to do it.

Hi all… this is the person who sent the original email. Lots of inaccuracies here.

@Carey: USPS says it takes 2 days to go first-class from NYC to Hackensack.

@scoobydoo: The form they had me write it on was a carbon form. So when I wrote the info on it, it went on somewhere around 4 different sheets. I got the top one. When you’re shipping ground, it’s a lot different than shipping express- setting up a pickup costs money. And I don’t have blank waybills lying around in my dorm room.

@matto: You can’t send ground packages from a drop-box.

@44 in a row: That’s what happens on express airbills. Ground ones don’t have that.

@DeltaPurser: I got in the 98th percentile on my SATs. Does that make me a douche?

Although I’m reluctant to say to the original poster, “It’s not that hard, sofigure it out,” I think the stronger argument is that when you go into a FedEx/Kinko’s store, you should be able to get assistance.

I went into a FedEx/Kinko’s store in Chelea a few months ago, and had a similar experience, and this was in the middle of a weekday. I knew what I was doing so it wasn’t a problem, really, but I had a question or two — about rates I think — and I actually had to call FedEx from my cell to get the answer, and the guy at FedEx was one of those people who treats you like an idiot when you ask a basic question, and then later in the call realizes h was wrong for making a certain assumption, and then starts acting like he’s your best friend.

Anyway, it sound liked FedEx/Kinko’s has some organizational things to figure out here, such as how to properly support their customers.

Also, to the OP, I am not 100% certain, but I’m pretty sure your credit card info only appears on the second layer sheet. The other carbon sheets below the top are blacked out in that area, so theoretically the card info doesn’t show up. Obviously, someone could do the gravestone-rubbing thing and try to get your info that way, but I don’t think it’s just there in plain sight.

Congrats on your high SAT score. That and $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee.

@amejr999: Sweetheart, intelligence has nothing to do with being a DOUCHE… I’m sure you’re smart as a whip, but I think we may have lost intricate parts of the story in “translation” here… Don’t take it personally. I’d still go on a date with you :-)

Also, if you did wind up shipping it ground, that explains a few things, like why they couldn’t give you an exact cost. Fedex Express envelopes are flat-rate up to a certain point. Fedex Ground, however, doesn’t have flat-rate shipping, or even any standardized shipping containers (they’re not supposed to accept any Fedex Express packaging for Ground shipments at all, and doing so can cause the shipment to get mis-directed). Cost is based solely on weight and dimensions, and those can only be ascertained when the package is actually entered into the system, so if their shipping computer isn’t running, they can’t give you the cost. That could have also led to the confusion about the arrival date, since at least in the past, Fedex Ground didn’t pick up or deliver on Mondays to some areas.

If the shipping department was closed (as I would imagine it would be on a Sunday night), why not try and see if a different location had an open one with a fed-ex staff? You’re complaining that people who don’t work in that department TRIED to help you anyway.

@scoobydoo: You’re actually making the point of those who say that filling out the airbill is not evident when you’ve never done it. If ARush decided to put up a jpeg illustrating how to fill the bill that’s because they were frequently asked about it by their clients. If it were evident there would be no reason to put up an image to show how to do it.

you can print your own shipping labels, at kinkos even. most post offices have fedex drop boxes and fedex supplies available inside.

in regards to the usps comments, they’re ok but their overnight service is far less of a guarantee than fedex’s is. it’s also strangely ever so slightly more expensive. that 41 cent stamp must be for something within an hour’s drive.

@scoobydoo: actually every single bit of information can get to the bottom page if you press hard enough. that’s actually the whole idea behind those forms, that every bit of information gets through to the bottom. different forms have different fields but they all print through to the last page if you apply the necessary pressure.

Despite that people usually laugh at at the USPS for their problems, I had a similar issue with FedEx and gave up. So I thought why try “them” – I called USPS.

USPS phone guy’s English wasn’t great but he got it. He said “yes, we get from you tonight and take to Florida by 3 PM yes-very easy-very-simple.. We come you in a couple hours – a little extra.” They did and the letter was there.

@amejr999: It’s unreasonable to expect them to staff the location with FedEx specialists 24/7. FedEx’s website says that the last Ground drop off for the Astor Place location is at 6 PM. Wouldn’t that mean you can’t drop off packages after 6?

I didn’t score in the top 98 percentile on my SAT so I could be wrong. I actually don’t remember what percentile got on my ACT/SATs. Once in college I don’t see how they have any relevance except for people who think they should be respected for doing well on a college admissions exam. It just makes everyone think you’re a douche, perhaps rightly so.

FedEx’s website says that the last Ground drop off for the Astor Place location is at 6 PM. Wouldn’t that mean you can’t drop off packages after 6?

That generally means it’s the last “drop-off” for purposes of having it shipped that day. That is, you can drop it off whenever you want at a 24-hour location, but if it’s after the last drop-off, it won’t go out until the next day. Which leads to the point that, if there are idiots working there late Sunday night, you’re better off just going the next day, since it wouldn’t be getting on a truck until then anyway.

Ok I’ll say it, he’s not the brightest. USPS has overnight service. AND there is usually a post office open until midnight (if not 24hr) in your area. There is no way I’m leaving my package AND credit card info without knowing the price and having a receipt.

@femmesavante: post office til midnight?! where are these magical places? christ i just want mine open past five now and then. also shipping ground is not overnight. the standard overnight and priority overnight go fedex express which is the overnight delivery with a guarantee. the funny thing is, it can say overnight if you ship ground from locations that close, but it sure as hell doesn’t mean it’ll get there.

next time find your local mailing depot. there are loads of shipping places that aren’t as retarded as kinkos.

Kinko’s was a great place to do business: their employees knew the business, were helpful, and were actually friendly in the process of doing business with them.

Then comes FedEX, partners with the Teamster’s union; repopulated Kinko’s with unionized toadies that could not care less about their jobs and totally destroyed in six months all of the customer loyalty and good will that was the stock in trade with the old Kinko’s.

I know what I want at the new FedEx Kinko’s, but finding someone who either knows or knows someone on the floor who does know is like pulling teeth from a rabid pit bull. I have walked out of the new FE Kinko’s twice because no one could find a six page fax or bound an entire 100-page proposal on the wrong margin.

The new FedEx Kinko’s simply does not give a **** anymore. The USPS and UPS are better than Kinko’s on a good day for Kinko’s.

I use to work for Kinko’s and I have to sympathize with the author of this blog. When I first started working there, I found that nobody and I mean NOBODY wanted to help the customers. This next part may sound funny but I assure you guys that this isn’t a joke. One of my co-workers didn’t want to help customers so much that she cleaned up a pile of shit on the bathroom floor that I bet some disgruntled customer left behind.

When you’re in this kind of environment, you start to act like a shitty employee. It took me a couple of years working there to wise up but I realized that the quicker I help a customer, the quicker they’re out of my face and on top of that, they’re happy.

With that being said, when I worked there we used 3 different shipping companies. FedEx, UPS and DHL. The problem was that only a few people knew the ins and outs of the shipping part and they all worked in the morning. Then the evening rolls around and people would come in asking me about the shipping and I wouldn’t have a clue as to how to do it. I got tired of looking like a dumbass to customers so I would ask my manager to not only train me but train all the other employees on how to ship things but it kept getting blown off. To this day I still don’t know how to properly ship something.

The quality of a Kinko’s store has everything to do with the manager. If the manager is shitty, then the store is shitty. If the manager is on top of it, then the store runs excellent but it is my experience that most of the Kinko’s run like shit. Its so shitty there that Dave Chappele did a parody of Kinko’s with the “Pop Copy” sketch. There’s alot more shit I’d like to talk but that would take up too much server space.

btw, all the people criticizing the author about not knowing how to ship and he should have done this or done that are all dickheads. NOBODY in this world knows EVERYTHING and thats why people need help with what they don’t know. I know how to change the brakes on my car. Should I expect everyone else to know how to change their brakes. I know how to rip open a computer and fix whats wrong with it. Should I expect everyone else to know how to fix a computer? You people need to get off your high horses of just fall off and break your necks instead of hating on people.

I don’t really see the big deal here. I used to work at OfficeMax who offers DHL shipping services. The only people that dealt with that were the ones in the Impress (our print and document services) area. I sold electronics and it would always bug the hell out of me when people would get pissed at me for not knowing Impress or DHL. I couldn’t figure out that DHL shipping procedure for the life of me, and I used to work in the receiving department of another store shipping 20-30 UPS packages a day. Just because it’s an “inclusive” store doesn’t mean every employee knows everything about the store.

However, in the OPs defense I find it odd the manager didn’t know how anything about the shipping. A manager should at least know how to do everything in the store.

i avoid new york like the plague honestly. AND ALL YOU BASTARDS STILL COME HERE!!! kidding. new york’s an anamoly as far as what can be done there. basically any advice given on where to find services there doesn’t apply to most of the rest of the country. except between 3:45 and 4am when the city inexplicably empties and you can lie down in the street.

bleh, my skin feels dirty just thinking about being in new york. grime :p

First off the Elitist attitude’s of most of you on here saying that Kinko’s Employee’s are stupid is insulting, just because people work in Retail doesn’t make them stupid, Most of my coworkers are college bound and or finishing graduate school. Not everybody has the benefit of finding the most exciting career path of working in a mundane office.

Secondly why the hell would this person leave their credit card number with anybody? There are 3 different forms to fill out for FedEx Express, Express International, and Ground. If they came after their Pick up time (Which is posted not only on the website but also on every front door of every Kinko’s) they would be SOL on that package going out that night anyway so if they didn’t feel comfortable leaving it then they could have came back the next day.

As far as there not being numbers, there’s Customer Service Numbers everywhere in the damn store, we get about a million people bitching about stupid shit all the time. 1-800-2-kinkos or 1-800-go-fedex

Problem is, and yes there are employee’s that are stupid too (hell we have a few in my store and we are currently in the process of firing them), most customers are stupid too. If I had a dollar for every time somebody asked me if they could “MAIL” something or drop off UPS or DHL at my store alone I’d be rich. Hell I get packages that are UPS and DHL that people just leave at our counter and run out of the store like their dropping off a bomb.

Is Kinko’s perfect, Hell no. Are customers stupid? A lot of the time. Are Kinko’s employee’s stupid? Some of them (maybe more). But most of you don’t even know the BS Kinko’s employee’s have to go through every single day.

Now as far as those people at this store? They sound lazy and stupid and I would fire them if I worked there as their boss, but I don’t. I would also tell this customer that their stupid for leaving their credit card number with strangers.

BTW who ever said Teamsters Union is an idiot, there’s no Union with Kinko’s or FedEx so I don’t know where you got that one.

honestly, if you’re going to attempt to defend intelligence in a really long rant, run it through spellcheck. random capitalization, random punctuation, constant misuse of apostrophe and mistaking “there,” “they’re” and “their” really punch holes in your defense.

I lived in the UES for a summer and had to send some packages home using a FedEx/Kinkos. The first time I was completely polite to the woman working and received only attitude and the feeling that I was inconveniencing her.

The next couple times, I realized that I got better and quicker service the ruder I was to her. I’m not joking, I felt like I was vying for dominance. I would basically throw the package on the counter, not say one word, and throw her the stink eye. Only then did she hustle and do her job in a timely manner.

Surely the Astor Place FedEx Kinkos is not the only place in the Borough of Manhattan where one can overnight a package. Why didn’t this chucklehead just go elsewhere when he realized the employees were clueless?

For future reference, you can just use take your absentee ballot to the Post Office and have them postmark it. The ballot must merely be postmarked by the day before the election in order to be counted. No need for expensive overnight shipping!

Source: [longisland.about.com]Return your Absentee Ballot to your county Board of Elections. If delivered in person, they must receive it before the polls close on the day of election. If you are mailing it, it must be postmarked no later than the day before election, and received no later than the seventh day after election.

I’ve had good luck at the Fedex Kinko’s near me, but I also don’t go there all that often. I will say that A) I once had to overnight my grad school applications and the USPS got all 6 of them there on time and B) My mom once had a Fedex employee tell her she could mail something to a Fedex Kinkos location and they would hold it for me, since it was a large box that I didn’t want sitting outside my door. When I went to pick it up, the Fedex Kinkos employees berated me (the person who picked it up) even though it was a Fedex employee who said it was ok AND I had no knowledge of this plan until it was already shipped. I haven’t been back to that location since, and I have no plans to.

The county clerk’s office mistyped my address, so I only ended up getting the ballot on Sunday. I brought it to Kinko’s to make sure it arrived back at the clerk’s office in time.

So you ONLY got it on Sunday and wanted to ship it back on Sunday???

Wow, what a place you live that you have mail delivered on Sundays…
But if you were next daying it, you could have shipped it on Monday and it would have arrived as well.

98% tile isn’t much to brag about unless it is around other geeks. Your percentage in Common sense is what mattered here. Less than 50% is what I am putting you down for…
So overall, you are in the ~74% range. Happy?

@Skankingmike: basic understanding of language is actually a prime indicator of intelligence. language is an abstract concept meant to help us understand and explain the world around us. the words represent objects, actions and concepts that are still there whether or not they are labeled and described with words. the ability of a brain to wrap around abstractions such as language, the passing of time and the quantity zero (math being another language) does actually matter when it comes to being able to work out more difficult ideas. the human brain picks up most of its sounds by listening to others, mostly before the age of about 5. you pick up most of your spelling habits and understanding of grammar from reading. so most people that cannot use punctuation correctly and don’t understand homonyms just don’t read.

you turned out to be dyslexic. you are also a dick though because you called someone else an idiot first so i just think being snarky is called for.

you also came to the defense of someone not knowing how to do their job which, unless they’re in training, there is no excuse for. bad management or not, it doesn’t take much to learn on your own what you’re supposed to do if you have even the basic intent of doing what you’re getting paid for. sadly, most people don’t care. being careless doesn’t deserve being excused.

@matto: I finally had to join. This is crazy why pick on this guy? Its a fedex store they should know how to help him. Why must people always pick on the consumer. granted some deserve it but not this guy

I worked at Kinko’s during the transition to FedEx Kinko’s, and I can confirm that the training and organization between the two halves of the operation (copy vs. ship) is rather lacking. Very few employees are able to master the entire scope of the new operation (copying, binding, printing, machine maintenence, customer service, sign making, software, the minutia of FedEx shipping, packaging, etc, etc), so the staff, pulled in too many directions as to job description, naturally fragmented into specialist positions. So if you needed to ship something when the shipping specialist was not on shift, you were out of luck, and the company didn’t want to pay to put another employee through their woefully inadequate web-based training seminar – or, god forbid, have to hire someone new. One of the main reasons I left (other than the fact I graduated college and was ready to hightail it out of retail forever) was that, whenever real and tangible problems with the business model arise, FedEx Kinko’s is quick to issue new uniform components or lower color copy costs by 10 cents, or introduce strained new ‘consultative selling’ scripts for employees to recite – but they are slow to examine the root causes of problems in their business and deployment strategies.
As to the original post: I think the submitter was just on the unfortunate receiving end of this internal disorganization.

Yes, the post office would have been up for the challenge but, depending on the time of day, it may not have been possible to guarantee next day service. Even postal delivery confirmation (‘tracking’) only indicates that it was delivered, but not necessarily to the proper address. The logical solution, at least for future service, would be to ship items via a convenient The UPS Store. Those locations offer the office services that Kinkos does, as well as specialize in ALL shipping aspects. These locations also have very late evening pickup times to get those important air shipments there the next day. Not only is the service excellent at The UPS Stores, but they offer the SAME low shipping rates as the major hub locations. Many people don’t realize that ‘alternative’ shipping locations have markups. I may sound like a commercial, but I too had to learn the hard way and can count on UPS. Tom K.

The stores are not open late at night for the shipping business. They are open to finish copy orders. The employees working that shift don’t know a whole lot more than normal people do about shipping. To them that whole area is self service once the shipping coordinators leave for the day. (after the pickups)